Masks
by Despaired Poet
Summary: A faceless stranger keeps visiting Sakura and it turns into a relationship of sorts. Only problem is he still won't remove his mask, so Sakura is forced to take action. Read and Enjoy!


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. This idea came to me from a prompt at the livejournal community 30Lemons. The prompt was: Anonymity, or, "Taken by the Faceless Stranger." Read and Enjoy!

He'd been coming here for a few weeks now. It started out with just him watching her, and then she'd caught him staring, like a peeping tom. In all rights she should have been angry, but instead she cried. That night she let him hold her as she wept for the lives lost. Ones she barely even knew but hadn't been able to save. As the weeks went on, she let him do more then merely hold her. That one night was hot it all began…

He dropped through the open window, just like always and searched the darkened apartment. He found her lying on the bed; she'd been reading as she fell asleep. He silently reached out and removed the opened book from her hands. It was another medical text, placing it on the bed side table for now; he knew she'd later place it among the other medial texts she owned. The masked figure then clicked the light off casting the room in complete darkness. His hand reached out and cupped her face, only then did she awake up.

Sakura came awake with a gasp, and then relaxed seeing the porcelain ANBU wolf mask in front of her face. She sat up and yawned. "I'd tried to stay up," she explained with a lopsided smile.

"You look tired," he said in a hushed tone. His eyes hidden behind the mask searched her face taking note of the dark circles forming under her eyes. "I should leave." He got up to go but she grabbed onto his hand.

"Don't," she pleaded softly. "I've missed you."

That was all it took to persuade him. Squeezing her hand, he let hers drop and removed the gray ANBU vest, along with every other article of clothing...except the mask.

Sakura looked over the well built man in front of her with pleasing eyes. Her eyes traveled the length of him from his toes to his face and frowned. He was still wearing the mask. She'd hoped by now he would have been able to trust her enough to reveal himself. She sighed with disappointment, as his body slide into the bed behind her. Her disappointment didn't last long as he pulled her into his slender yet muscled arms. She turned in his arms and buried her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply. He smelt vaguely of smoke and outdoors, just as he always did.

"I'm glad you're back," she whispered, kissing his shoulder. His arms tightened around her, pulling her body fully up against his so she could feel how happy he was to see her. Sakura moaned. His hands roamed down her back, to the edge of her dark blue panties. He didn't take anytime in removing them and pulling her leg up over his. This position, she noticed, seemed to be a favorite of his, where they were both lying on their sides, and the other was when she was on top.

Sakura smiled and let her hands run up and down his back as she nibbled along his shoulders and neck. His hand skimmed her outer thigh and curved to her inner thigh as his fingers found her core. She bit his neck when she felt his fingers easily guide themselves into her. She groaned as his fingers expertly stroked her, just hard and fast enough, like she liked. Her wordless cries filled the air as he brought her to her peek then stopped.

No sooner had she scowled at him did he enter her, his hardened member filling her up to the hilt. She sighed in pleasure as he slowly withdrew then pushed himself back into her. His rhythm was steady as his thrusts were hard as his throbbing member slide in and out of her moist lips. His breathing sounded harsh through the wolf mask, Sakura didn't think she'd be able to continue much longer, when his hand slide down between their bodies and rubbed her clit sending her over the edge and into her orgasm. As always she felt slightly dazed as she shivered from pleasure. Opening her eyes she saw the wolf mask hovering over her, as he held her tightly to ease the shivers.

She reached her hand up and stroked her fingers through his brown hair. Her eyes scrutinized every inch of the white porcelain mask with painted red strips. Her hands reached up to the mask, he quickly caught them and held her hands tightly in his and brought them down to rest between their bodies.

"Why won't—"

"No," he said swiftly cutting her off.

Sakura pursed her lips in a frown and rolled over away from him. Crossing her arms over her chest she closed her eyes willing the anger and hurt away.

She heard him sigh behind her and felt the bed shift as she was once again pulled into his arms.

"Not to night," he whispered.

"When then?" she asked exasperated.

"Soon,… but not now." She let him off the hook, she shouldn't have, but she didn't want him to leave like he had so many times before when this particular argument came up. She loosened her arms and let one drape over his and laced their fingers together. Closing her eyes she settled into sleep for the night, when the thought came to her. She wasn't going to wait any longer; she had to know who her lone wolf was. Yet…she was afraid of who he was. _Was that why he wouldn't show me?_ She wondered feeling her own doubts. _No,_ she thought shaking her doubts away. _This has gone on too long. I'll just have to talk to Ino tomorrow._ Feeling a little better she yawned and fell back asleep, wrapped safely in her wolf's arms.

"So tell me why are we here again?" Ino asked dropping down on the bench next to Sakura. "It must be something big, since this is where drastic things usually happen."

Sakura snorted, she wasn't kidding either. This had been the same bench she'd broken off their friendship so many years ago when they were both stupid, and when they'd started to slowly rekindle that friendship. "Well…"

"Don't tell me," Ino said, resting her arms on the back of the bench and letting her head roll back and faced Sakura. "He still hasn't shown you?"

"Yeah..." Sakura answered, pushing bangs behind her ear. "I thought that since it's been three months now. Well that, he'd finally confess who he was. But I don't know, maybe he's too scared."

Ino lifted her head from the bench and scowled at Sakura. "Why not just rip the damn thing off?"

"You have no tact," Sakura snapped.

"Or maybe you're scared," Ino guessed, grinning. "Forehead girl, you can't fool me. You're scared that once you see who it is then you'll not love him like you do now, am I right?"

"Shut it Pig-face," Sakura said without any conviction.

"Just as I thought," Ino said, bringing her arms to rest on her knees. "So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Sakura admitted. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"Humm, well we know he's ANBU, that's safe to say," Ino said tilting her face upwards. "So we just need to figure out who has the wolf mask, right? And to do that we need to know who all are ANBU members, and the only person who knows that is—"

"Tsunade," Sakura finished for Ino.

"Right, so that's not going to work," Ino muttered, sighing. "And we can't just go around Konoha letting you listen to every male ninja here."

"It wouldn't work anyways," Sakura answered with her own sigh. "I wouldn't be able to tell by the voice. And it's not like I can go around asking guys to take off their clothes."

"I like that idea," Ino said laughing. "I can see it going over well. 'Excuse me, Sir? Can you please remove your clothes so we can look at you?' We'd be worse the Jiraiya."

Sakura laughed. "That would be a site to see….but you know going after Tsunade isn't a bad idea."

"Whoa," Ino said, looking over at her friend. "We can't just ask her for the roster sheet."

"No," Sakura said smiling. "But we _are_ ninja, and who says we can't just borrow it for a little while, hum?

"We could get into big trouble for this," Ino warned, not sure if she wanted to continue with this plan of action.

"Only if we get caught," Sakura said, now smirking. "Why Pig-face if I didn't know any better I would think you're scared. Now that's not very ninja like."

"Scared?" Ino snorted. "I think not. I was just warning you since you're ninja skills seem to be lacking."

"Yeah?" Sakura challenged, getting up from the bench. "Then I'll meet you at Tsunade's office tonight."

"Fine!"

Sakura watched Ino storm off with a small smile playing at her lips.

Later that night, Sakura met Ino out side of the office building. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Sakura said looking at Ino, who was dressed in black for the occasion, just as she was.

"Not uh," Ino said glaring at Sakura. "You're not backing out on me now. Besides you know you want to see who's behind that mask."

"Yeah, but Tsunade is going to kill me if she finds out," Sakura whined.

"Then she won't know," Ino encouraged as she pushed Sakura into the building. "Now come on we don't have all night."

Sakura sighed, knowing this was her fault anyways. Once Ino got a plan formed in her head there was no changing it.

Once entering Tsunade's office, and after being extra careful of traps. "Gezz, she's paranoid to have that many traps set," Ino said, slumping down in Tsunade's chair.

"Thirty-five is a reasonable number," Sakura huffed, leaning against the wall. "At least we saw the last one before it was too late. I'd hate to be stuck in slug gooe all night."

Ino shivered, "You're telling me." While sitting behind the desk Ino looked through the drawers. "So it's not in here."

"I'll look through the book case," Sakura said, pushing herself off the wall and scanning the title of the books. "Make sure to be careful, she might have a trap set up in the office too."

"I swear, paranoid," Ino muttered.

Getting the roster sheet of the ANBU members was easy enough; now for the hard part, searching the lockers.

"But there are so many," Ino whined looking at the sheets of paper and back at the lockers.

"We'll split them up," Sakura said, dividing the papers in half. "You take these lockers and I'll take the rest. The sooner this is done the quicker we can get out of her before we get caught."

"Fine."

"Just call me if you find anything," Sakura said, looking at locker numbers on her list and starting from there.

"Yeah, whatever," Ino said dismissively and went to her own set of lockers.

A small shriek could be heard a few lockers over and Sakura thought they'd been caught. She rounded one row of lockers and stopped seeing Ino standing in front of one of the lockers with her eye twitching. Sighing in relief, Sakura walked over to Ino with a scowl on her face. "What the hell? You scared me half to death," Sakura said, "I me...an…. whose locker is that?"

Ino handed Sakura the roster sheet while her eyes stayed firmly attached to the inside of the locker. Sakura quickly scanned the sheet. "238 Gai, 239 Neji, 240 ….Genma?!" Sakura looked up from the roster sheet to the locker and back down. "No way! Wow, he really has a thing for….ahem." Sakura looked back over at Ino.

"He is _so_ dead for this!" she yelled, making Sakura wince.

"Shut up," Sakura whispered, looking at the door to the ANBU locker room. "Someone will hear us. I thought you were a ninja."

"I am," Ino replied in a harsh whisper, turning her murderous eyes on Sakura. "Better then you are."

Sakura gave a tight smile, resisting the bait Ino had thrown out. Now was not the time to get into an argument, but later. Later she would set her straight.

"I can't believe that pig," Ino whispered, her eyes now scrutinizing Genma's locker. "I mean….he…those are pictures of my face…..on those…."

"Okay, I think you need to stop looking at them," Sakura said, shutting the locker door after taking a good look at his ANBU mask.

_Thank all that is holy_, Sakura thought in relief, pushing Ino away from Genma's locker. Sakura then went back to the row of lockers she was supposed to be looking in, but heard every whispered torture Ino was going to put Genma through. Sakura had to stifle a giggle as she continued searching. She almost felt sorry for Genma, almost being the operative word.

"Did you find anything yet?" Sakura called out softly when she couldn't hear Ino's murderous whispers.

"No, but I found Kiba's locker," she giggled. "And a pair of his boxers."

Sakura rolled her eyes, that girl needed help serious help. Sakura turned back to her row of lockers. Looking down at the paper she quickly twisted the lock and opened the locker and let out a scream. Ino came around the corner to see Sakura with both hands firmly pressed against the locker, she was breathing heavily as well.

"What? What happened?" she asked, looking around the room for whatever it was that made Sakura scream.

"S-s-Shino's locker," Sakura stuttered.

Ino's eyes widened and nodded her head in understanding, "He…ahem…had a?"

"Yeah."

"Did you see his ah?"

"Yeah."

"So was he?"

"No."

"That's lucky," Ino said biting her lip so she wouldn't laugh at her friend's obvious distress. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Just give me a minute," Sakura said letting go of the locker and shook her hands frantically. "It was creepy…and crawly…and euk!"

Once Sakura had calmed down enough both girls went back to searching their row of lockers. Sakura looked down at the list and up at the last locker on her row. _Shikamaru,_ she read looking at the number on the locker. _It wouldn't be him; he's too lazy to…_ Her thoughts cut off as she opened the locker and there it was: the wolf ANBU mask.

Sakura gasped, as her eyes flew wide open. It was Shikamaru?! "Oh my," she whispered, reaching out to touch the mask. "But it does make sense now." Her thoughts turning to his bed room positions, he tended to favor the positions where he did the least amount of movement but then she wasn't complaining either, every once in a while he felt inclined to move and those nights had been amazing. Sakura picked the mask up and held it in her hands tracing the red paint over the porcelain mask. Her lone wolf was Shikamaru….but why couldn't he have just told her who he was? Was he scared that she would reject him?

Sakura placed a finger to her lip as she pondered the thought of her mystery lover being Shikamaru. Honestly she was relieved and ecstatic that it was Shikamaru, she'd been worried that she could have ended up with someone she normally wouldn't have allowed herself to be with or who had a fondness for weird things like Genma. A shiver went down her spine.

No matter how hard she tried not to think about it, Genma's locker was not going to be purged from her mind. Well, she could deal with Shikamaru, and the thought wasn't all that bad either, personally she kind of liked it….she liked it a lot.

"Oi, forehead girl did you find it?" Ino asked. Sakura heard footsteps coming around the row of lockers. Quickly putting the mask back into his locker, Sakura shut it and turned to meet Ino, who was holding Kiba's boxers.

"Pig face, what are you doing with those?" Sakura asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I figured I could play a little game with Kiba," Ino said grinning. "I mean look at the wittle puppies on his boxers, aren't they cute? I was thinking about taping them to his apartment door, I know a few people who would get a kick out that."

"Seriously," Sakura deadpanned. "You're scary, and I don't think I want to be on your bad side."

"Damn right," Ino snapped. "So did you find out who it was or what?"

"Yeah, but I'll have to tell you who later," Sakura said putting the roster sheet under her arm. "Let's get this returned to Tsunade and get out of here before we get caught. I've had enough adventure for the night."

"Agreed."

Three nights after the fateful break and no one had noticed. Sakura had plenty of time to think over her 'relationship' with Shikamaru and finally get used to knowing who it was and she couldn't have been happier. Now that she thought about it, if I hadn't been Shikamaru it wouldn't have felt right. Now all she needed to do was find a way to tell him that. She figured, he thought she was still upset about him not telling her who he was.

"Oh well," she sighed, changing out of her clothes for the day and into some lounge around the house clothes, which consisted of a tank top and cotton shorts. "He'll eventually come when he gets around to it." Smiling, she picked up the folder and plopped herself down on the bed, piling the pillows behind her back so she could comfortable read.

Sakura glanced over at the clock again and sighed, apparently he wasn't going to show up tonight either. Placing the medical folder on her bedside table she pulled back the covers and snuggled under them before turning off the lamp. Once settled she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

She woke up when she felt the bed dip; groggily she turned her head to see the wolf mask looking back at her. "Where have you been?" she asked yawning.

"You were mad," he answered in the same hushed tones as always.

"Not overly," Sakura admitted, letting him pull her towards him so her back was pressed firmly to his front. "Just annoyed at you."

"Humm," he muttered, his arms tightening around her as his hands started to wander. His rough callused hands, skimmed over her stomach and underneath her tank top, carefully making their way up towards her breasts.

Sakura's breath hitched as her nipples hardened under his playful fingers. "Trying to persuade me not to be annoyed with you?" she asked with a small moan as he pinched her nipples.

"Will it work?" he asked, letting one of his hands move down her stomach and stopped at the tip of her shorts.

"Haven't decided," she murmured, watching his fingers hover over her hips and which just made her squirm wanting his hand to slip under her panties and touch her. She heard him chuckle as he slowly inched his fingers down and underneath her panties till he was just above her clit.

"I swear you take any longer," Sakura warned. His fingers dipped down lower and touched her. She practically screamed in relief, which made him laugh even more.

"You're already this wet," he whispered, which just made her stomach tighten in even more pleasure. He slipped his fingers in between her moist lips and started rubbing her in a slow circular motion. This just made her squirm even more as she pushed herself against him, grinding her butt into his hardened member, in turn made him groan. As punishment his fingers started moving faster till he felt her orgasm. Her body shivered against his, and cum coated his fingers.

"Did it work?" he asked, grinning behind the mask. He slid his hand out of her shorts.

"Smart ass," she mumbled coming down form the pleasure. She took in a few deep breaths to start breathing normal again. "But I wished you'd take off the mask so you could kiss me. I think that's what bothers me the most." She turned in his embrace to face him. Her hand reached up and traced the side of the mask firmly attached to his face, his hand grabbed her wrist. "I love you," she told him, kissing the lips of the mask before pulling her hand back.

Sakura sighed, turning back over, giving him her back, to go to sleep. "You can take the mask off now, Shikamaru," she yawned.

….."How did you know?"

"I'm a woman and a ninja, I have my ways. Besides even if I told you, you really wouldn't want to know," she said smugly, and then turned serious. "Was it because you were scared?"

"No, it was just too troublesome," he answered. She could hear him taking off the mask, and it was confirmed when he reached over and placed the wolf mask on her bed side table. But deep down, he had been scared.

"Ugh, Shikamaru!" she grumbled crossing her arms. He smiled, turning her to face him and pulling her back into his arms. He heard her grumble a few more choice words at him. He just bent down and kissed her forehead for the first time.


End file.
